Co-founder of Equal Reality, Brennan Hatton, gave an exclusive lecture about the future of AI to media students at the University of Wollongong last week.
Hatton said that AI presents the largest shift to digital workplaces in recent memory, and he was optimistic about what that means.
“The barrier of entry for programming and coding has just plummeted and that’s awesome,” Hatton said.
“Coding is not a good use of time; you need to be thinking outside the box.”
Hatton demonstrated his experience with AI by reflecting on the programming of his game JudgeGPT.
Using prompts, ChatGPT generated code to create courtroom scenarios, allowing two users to input their arguments and determine a winner.
“AI doesn’t need to be 100% accurate to be a powerful tool to use,” he said.
“If error messages come up from the code, I just put the code back into the AI with the error message and it’ll often fix it.
“If it’s half right it outweighs the flaws.”
Hatton then speculated about the future of work and AI in the next five years.
“I think speaking to AI is going to be like speaking to Google,” he said.
“Speaking to Google is a very important tool I’ve grown up with. If you don’t know something you ask Google and AI is similar but it’s much more human.
“I’d also like AI to start a conversation about the value of human time and labour.
“Historically, skills have been behind a paywall, you need to pay to go to university, now you can just go to ChatGPT, you can just do things that previously you couldn’t.
“I think right now people are very reliant on the fact they’ve got skills and experience.
“I want people to ask, if my value isn’t tied to my job, or my skillset, or my work experience, then what is it tied to?”
The lecture was organised by Dr Brian Yecies for his third-year Bachelor of Communications and Media subject.